For
Volume I of the Second Edition of my Scripture Workbook, I expand many of
the sections from the first edition. But that I mean I added many more Scripture
references and additional details. But for some reason, I didn’t expand the very
first section of Chapter One. That chapter is titled “Authority of the
Scriptures.” That first section is very important as it established the claim of
the Bible being the Word of God that the rest of the book is based on. I guess I
didn’t think of expanding that section as I wasn’t sure what I was doing yet for
the revision.

In any case, it has been bugging me that I hadn’t expanded that section, so I
went ahead and did so. It is not possible to update the published versions of
the Workbook, but below is the updated section. With publishing it in
this format rather than in book form, I am able to utilize expanded formatting,
along with some color.

We Believe:

The Holy Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to be the
inspired Word of God, without error in the original manuscripts, the complete
revelation of His will for our salvation and the Divine and final authority for
all Christian faith and life (Article #1 on Darkness to Light’s Confession of
Faith).

1) The Scripture writers claim to be presenting the very
Words of God:

14 of the 17 prophetic books consist almost
entirely of discourses and visions from the LORD. The exceptions are Daniel and
Jonah, which also have narrative, and Lamentations, which is
Jeremiah’s lamination over the fall of Jerusalem.

In the New Testament:

Only references to the words of God the Father are listed, not those of Jesus.
But since Jesus is God, all of His words in the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation
are also the words of God. These are printed in red in some Bibles. Not included are words of the LORD quoted from the OT.

That’s
a total of 1,646 times the Scripture writers are claiming to be speaking for
God. There are 31,102 verses in the Bible, so that is on average about once
every 19 verses. It is true this does not prove that they were in fact doing so. However, if someone claims to be speaking for
God, or even more so if they claim they have heard the voice of God or seen a
vision, then there are only three possibilities: The person is telling the
truth; the person is lying, or the person is hallucinating and thus is mentally
disturbed.

For example,
when Isaiah records his vision of the LORDin the sixth chapter of his book,
either that event happened, or he made it up, or he was hallucinating. So a
decision must be made: do the writings of Isaiah read like those of an honest
person, a liar, or a lunatic?

The point is,
either the Bible is what it claims to be, the very Word of God, or it is a
complete fraud. There is no middle ground. It cannot be said the Bible is a
“good book” but not the Word of God.

It should also
be noted, the NT writers attribute OT words to God even if they are not
specifically ascribed to God in the OT. This shows that all of Scripture is the
Word of God:

For many more such detailed studies of the Scriptures, see
the new edition of my
Scripture Workbook. It is the first of what will be two volumes.
The first volume covers the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. It is
these doctrines that separate the true Christian faith from cultic and other
deviations. Included are studies on such essential doctrines as the
authority and reliability of the Scriptures, the attributes of God, the Trinity,
and forgiveness and salvation.